Porsche 944 Turbo | PH Heroes

40 years of transaxle Porsches - a landmark worth celebrating? Time to drive one of the best and find out!

Bad ideas deserve to die, but good ones aren't immune from failure either. The first thing that strikes you about a well-preserved Porsche 944 is how modern it looks and feels despite being 30 years old. The second is how much fresher and better designed it was than the 911s that Porsche was knocking out at the time.

Yet while the company's arse-engined, air-cooled dinosaur has long since had its classic status confirmed by the sort of prices that make London property look undervalued, the 944 remains one of those 'other' Porsches. Like its close relatives the 924 and 968 it's widely regarded as an also-ran. It failed in its mission to replace the 911 for the simple fact that buyers never formed the same emotional connection with it, yet maybe it's time for a reassessment.

This 944 Turbo might well be one of very best. There's just enough patina to confirm the odometer's admission to 21,000 miles, but in every other regard its near immaculate and in what seems to be completely original nick. It's even wearing its original main dealer sales sticker on the back window. It's being sold by respected Porsche fettlers Autofarm for a chunky price that we'll get to later, but one that a day in its company comes dangerously close to justifying.

Four-cylinder Porsches?
In 2016 the idea of a turbocharged four-cylinder Porsche is enough to get some people into a froth of righteous indignation, but in the 1980s the concept caused far less alarm. The 924 and its descendants were all four-cylinder and when Porsche decided to try and extract more power from the not especially muscular Audi-derived engine strapping a blower onto it was the obvious answer - this was the era that gave us 'Turbo' aftershave, after all.

The 924 Turbo had boasted 170hp, but in the 944 Porsche boosted that to 220hp; the later Turbo S managed 250hp. Serious stuff back then, and enough to make the 944 something of a performance bargain, especially given how easily it could be tuned to build substantially on those numbers.

It feels odd to see the familiar lower case 'turbo' script writ large on the back of something that so obviously isn't a 911; or these days a Cayenne or Macan. The 944's styling has aged well - it's hard not to like any car with pop-up headlamps - but it is pretty much a design synthesis of the 911 and the uber 928.

It's been so long since I sat in a 944 I had completely forgotten how nice the interior is; this was an era when most manufacturers less attention to ergonomics than they did to vinyl go-faster stripes, yet the cabin is a model of clarity and - by the standards of the age - loaded with kit. There's even a sort of proto climate control system. The instruments look gorgeous, red needles and crisp white fonts, and with a turbo boost gauge integrated into the rev counter. Because you needed to know your turbo was boosting, right?

Turbo, charge!
Heading onto some local roads and the first dynamic impression is of the 944's laid-back nature. The gearshift has a long action and notchy detents that don't like to be rushed, the clutch is heavy and bites high and even at manoeuvering velocities the steering feels low-geared. The engine is a bit grumbly low down, pulling cleanly but without much in the way of either torque or enthusiasm.

This isn't the sort of turbo lag that affected many of the 944's forced induction contemporaries, the sort that makes a binary transition between nothing and everything. The boost starts to build relatively low in the rev range, you can feel it by 3,000rpm, but it takes a long time for the turbine to spool up to full puff, and it's still pulling harder at 6,000rpm. The result is a car that's deceptively fast, with the way the power delivery sneaks up on you making it easy to find yourself cruising well beyond wrist-slapping territory.

For pictures we choose to use the B4011 between Bicester and Long Crendon, a favourite bit of Buckinghamshire, but cold and greasy when we visit. The sort of conditions that, in a 1986 911, would create either an urge to travel at the sort of cautious pace that would see you labelled as a wuss, or alternatively a brisker trot that would risk some fairly substantial gusset staining if the grip gave out.

Easy Company
The 944 Turbo couldn't be more different. The steering still feels leisurely at speed, the front end only starts to respond with a surprising amount of lock applied and feedback is muted at best. It doesn't take much to get the front edging wide on the slippery surface, but beyond that it's very secure; the back end refusing to be baited into slip even with big throttle applications despite the lack of any kind of stability control. It can carry serious speed - there's no way I'd travel this quickly in a contemporary 911 on a slippery road - but it's definitely a GT rather than an adrenaline-spiking sportscar.

Does the 944 Turbo deserve hero status? That's a finely balanced call, and one that you'll have your own instinctive take on. For me, not quite - I can think of several more exciting ways to spend a similar amount of money on a contemporary alternative. But this one is still a particularly nice way to travel.

Many people have grown poorer - in relative terms - by predicting that non-911 Porsches are overdue an increase in value. The 924, 944 and even 968 languished in the doldrums for years, with rougher examples dropping into outright bangerdom. Prices being asked for good ones have started to go up recently, but not to anything like the extent of even some of the least desirable 911s of the same era. It's not the sort of car you get into one expecting to fill your pockets with speculative gold.

This 944 Turbo is on sale with a "region of" £45,000 pricetag, supported by a recent mild restoration that's brought it back to pretty much as-new standard; that's a serious amount to pay for any 944, even one that can claim to be possibly the best surviving example. Compared to what you'd have to pay for a 911 Turbo of the same era and it's suddenly an outrageous bargain, of course...

SPECIFICATION | PORSCHE 944 TURBO

Engine: 2,479cc, Inline-4 Turbo
Transmission: 5-speed manual, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 220@5,800rpm
Torque (lb ft): 243@3,500rpm
0-60mph: 5.9sec
Top speed: 157mph
Weight: 1320kg
MPG: 15.2mpg
CO2: N/A
Price new: £34,168